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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Waterbaby: Memory Be a Blade review – stellar singer-songwriter pieces post-breakup life back together

Waterbaby.
Evocative … Waterbaby. Photograph: Levi Axene

The bewilderment of a romantic breakup, and the consolation prize of understanding yourself a little better afterwards, is rendered evocatively on the eight-song debut album by Waterbaby, a Stockholm singer-songwriter who prefers to keep her real name out of the public eye.

She improvised some of the lyrics, which creates the sense of her piecing together a new reality in real time, though that approach has its limits: the pleasant but vague opening song, Sink, threatens to do just that. But, thereafter, she locks into a run of superb material, performed on piano, acoustic guitar, drums, strings and brass, augmented with flourishes such as dulcimer and flute.

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